Posted on May 28, 2009
A recent report from Amnesty International highlights the increased human rights abuses resulting from the current global economic distress.Billions of people are suffering from insecurity, injustice and indignity. This is a human rights crisis. The crisis is about the shortages of food, jobs, clean water, land and housing and also about growing inequality and insecurity, xenophobia and racism, violence and repression...

Posted on May 26, 2009
The complex situation represented by Guantanamo Bay and the detainees there along with other detention centers around the world continues to attract the attention of news outlets across the globe. Some reports repeat themselves, while others are new to the scene...

Posted on May 25, 2009
In Pakistan's Swat Valley, many are being displaced by the ravages of ongoing war. Among the refugees are many children who may have been separated and reunited with their parents or who may remain separated. The trauma of war and post-traumatic syndrome may be seen in many of their faces...

Posted on May 23, 2009
("Cineman" was the head for several film-review columns I wrote for several different publications over the years. Am reviving it here for occasional forays into the world of film.)
A friend of mine is currently embroiled in a conflict with Authority...

Posted on May 20, 2009
"Hard cases," observed Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, "make bad law." And Holmes should know, having held that Eugene Debs should rot ten years in prison for opposing World War I, and having hallucinated that the clear command of the First Amendment that "Congress shall make no law ...

Posted on May 19, 2009
Crossposted from The Wild Wild Left.
"The children are our Future." Never has a sweet sentimental adage been more abused by its utterers by adults with visions of their own dangerous and demented futures, than when Hitler's Youth was in existence from 1922 t0 1945...

Posted on May 19, 2009
for alexa
The photographs which the Obama administration resists releasing, documenting the torture of prisoners by American citizens at seven separate facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, are my responsibility. As they are yours. For we paid the people who took those photographs, and we paid those who inflicted the suffering...

Posted on May 17, 2009
More news from Guantanamo as the discussions continue about the future of the prisoners. Some will be released. Some will be subject to trial. But of the others who knows?
The recent decision by President Obama to continue the military commissions raised the ire of various groups...

Posted on May 17, 2009
Poems written by the Guantanamo prisoners have been posted here at NION in the past. Tonight we have one more poem. These are posted in hope of keeping alive the dreams and ambitions of the men who write. We must not let them be forgotten...

Posted on May 08, 2009
Once again the week has passed and the world of science news continues to grow. The time has come to take a science break and escape the politics of the day for a bit. Pull up that comfy chair, rest yourself, and prepare for some exciting and tantalizing news in the realm of science...

Posted on May 07, 2009
"But remember it is a sin to kill a mockingbird, because mockingbirds don't do anything but make music for us to enjoy."
--Atticus Finch
Pakistani singer and poetess Ayman Udas was shot and killed by two of her brothers, who entered her Peshawar flat and fired three bullets into her chest while her husband was out fetching milk...

Posted on May 06, 2009
The days continue to pass while the prisoners at Guantanamo languish in detention as the world debates their future. The political wranglings continue day by day as do the judicial proceedings. Every day brings new news to the scene.
From Spain comes the question, "Will the U...

Posted on May 03, 2009
So I know you were just sitting around wondering, "What are the origins of the modern police state?," and maybe, "Can an effort at genocide, if sustained long enough, actually work?," or possibly, "What would happen if a bunch of religious zealots were in a position to exercise spiritual, temporal, political, and military authority over all they survey?" Well, Pope Innocent III, the same guy who launched the Fourth Crusade, certainly asked himself these questions, and he sought to answer them through direct action...

Posted on May 02, 2009
Poems written by the Guantanamo prisoners have been posted here at NION in the past. Tonight we have one more poem. These are posted in hope of keeping alive the dreams and ambitions of the men who write. We must not let them be forgotten...

Posted on May 01, 2009
One more week is passed and the world of science news is online again. The time has come to take a science break and escape the politics of the day for a bit. Pull up that comfy chair for some exciting and tantalizing news in the realm of science...

Posted on April 28, 2009
Last week's edition of Monday Night Book Club by blueness brought forth a discussion about Terry Pratchett (Sir Terence David John Pratchett) that deserves a bit of expansion and more consideration. Pratchett is an English author of fantasy tales that often present a comical twist...

Posted on April 27, 2009
Every day these days brings new discussions and new revelations about the state of torture around the world. Today's news finds a focus on the U.S. and continues the debate about if or not to investigate the Bush administration. The facts become more and more clear as the days pass...

Posted on April 27, 2009
And yes I do mean victim. Not in the "Oh woe is me, I am helpless" sense (though I will admit to sometimes feeling that way - even non-paralyzed people feel that way, and the paralyzed have much reason to), but in the sense that I have been truly and actually victimized by the substandard health care, laughable rehabilitation services, and lack of access to real treatments like stem cell research, in this country...

Posted on April 26, 2009
According to stories in the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, it is not just the editorial board of the New York Times and people in the lefty blogosphere who are pissed at Jay Bybee.
Bybee is the federal judge who, while serving as Assistant Attorney General in George II's Office of Legal Counsel, penned a legal memorandum that provided the CIA with legal cover for the torture of the War on Terra prisoner Abu Zubaydah...

Posted on April 26, 2009
The truly beautiful thing about history is the way it informs on such a multitude of levels. Depending on the way one reads things, the same story can be anything from a simple, cautionary tale, to an eerily-similar depiction of current events, to a cause for awe and celebration of human achievement, to an inspiration for future generations - and all manner of interpretations in between...

Posted on April 23, 2009
During the time of the Bush administration the CIA operated a series of secret detention centers. To date the exact number and location of those centers remains unknown. In addition the number of prisoners held is not known nor is their disposition...

Posted on April 23, 2009
cross-posted at ePluribus and dKos
Please note: This is Part 2 of a 2-part diary series.
[snip] It was, after all, the one truism that I knew to be absolutely true, namely that everything good goes bad, everything alive dies and everything gained will be lost...

Posted on April 22, 2009
Every day there are new and different stories from the world of darkness we call Guantanamo. Analysis arrives from around the globe as the facts continue to come to light.
Concern about words not matching actions is in the forefront.
ImageBased on legal precedence, there is plenty of evidence that interrogation techniques used in Guantanamo Bay and other US run facilities, such as Abu Ghraib, constituted torture in violation of US and international laws...

Posted on April 21, 2009
For the first time, apparently, somebody decided to do a count, and so discovered that far more Americans suffer from some sort of paralysis than previously realized.
One in fifty Americans, or some 5.6 million people, live with paralysis.
And many of these people are very poor...

Posted on April 20, 2009
In the "Donkey Bookmobile" edition of Monday Night Book Club, I noted that the libraries around here had only recently recovered from decades of drastically reduced hours and skeletal staffs.
I spoke too soon.
With Governor Terminator and the clown-car known as the California State Legislature having once again thoroughly wrecked the state budget, the asphyxiating county here has determined that the way to give itself some financial air is to basically strangle all the libraries...

Posted on April 19, 2009
From Cage Prisoners comes an analysis piece by David Cole of the Guardian.The newly-published Bush administration memos show a chilling, Orwellian abuse of language to justify torture Dennis Blair, President Obama's director of national intelligence, minimized the contents of the most recent set of torture memos to be released sayingThose methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing...

Posted on April 18, 2009
The detention center at Guantanamo Bay remains open and functional as of this day. Resolution is farther away each day as the stories of mistreatment and of judicial meanderings continue to be heard. Follow along for a collection of Guantanamo news of the day...

Posted on April 16, 2009
The promised torture memos are released at last. The ACLU has full links to the .pdf forms of all four new memos here. The reading is tough going and frightening beyond words to describe.
Some excerpts follow. More to come as time allows for sifting through this horror...

Posted on April 14, 2009
Some detainees headed for Alexandria, VA?If the government chooses the Alexandria court to try any of the 250 remaining detainees, who include five 9/11 plotters, "the prisoners may be housed at the Alexandria Detention CenterThe issue is controversial in the local community, but the detainees must be transferred for judicial proceedings in accordance with Obama's promise to close Guantanamo...

Posted on April 11, 2009
Locking people up indefinitely, possibly forever, just on the President's say-so. With no right to appeal to a court. Please explain again why that isn't the behavior of an autocrat. Or is thinking that way so last administration? If a Democrat does it, is it just fine, like when Lyndon Johnson sen t the FBI to infiltrate and neutralize protest groups in Cointelpro, murdering dozens of Black Panthers in the process? Obama said all kinds of things we wanted to hear about Guantanamo...